


Itinerary

by Las



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Aftermath, Getting Together, M/M, Off-Season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 12:16:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10944324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/pseuds/Las
Summary: After the season ends, it's time for vacation.





	Itinerary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snickfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snickfic/gifts).



> After their 2016-17 season ended, the Bruins really [did go on a team vacation](http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/bruins/2017/04/25/patrice-bergeron-played-all-season-with-groin-injury/JXgX6uBXFIBODiS2vUZUUN/story.html) to [Arizona](https://www.instagram.com/p/BTbOhyADM9e/), for real.
> 
> Hello, Snick! I loved your prompts! I also love your fic [we mark this occasion](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9661631) and it was in my mind when I started playing around with this idea. I'm not sure if this is technically a remix or just inspired by your fic, but there is a tip of the hat to it for sure. Thanks for being a wonderful writer! I hope you enjoy this fic. <3
> 
> Thank you to m. for betareading.

They are the last to leave Arizona. 

Patrice slides into the Lyft, but Brad lingers outside, one hand on the car door, eyes on some indeterminate point in the sky. Patrice recognizes that look, and knows now to let it pass on its own. Everyone deals with the end of the season in their own way. The team vacation was a way to deal with it together, and it was as messy and wonderful as he expected it to be, but then vacations end, and you're left with whatever is next in your life. Brad is a restless kind of guy, and Patrice has seen him sink into this kind of agitation during all but one of the summers that he has known him.

"You have everything?" Hamid asks from the driver's seat.

"Everything for now," Brad concedes, and climbs in. When he is settled, Patrice knocks his knee against Brad's. Brad knocks back, and smiles at him.

The car pulls away.

They were only here a few days, but Brad spent most of it in the sun and he is still pink all over. "Skip this part," Brad said to him last night, still wincing at even the lightest kisses on his shoulder. "Let's just fuck. I'm not sunburned there." Patrice was happy to oblige. There's still a sense of wonder that catches him off-guard from time to time at the fact that he can do this, that he maybe could have done this for years if either of them had gotten their acts together. He no longer has to hide certain impulses, which the years have almost calcified into instinct. Brad is working his alchemy on them in the effortless way that he does. It's been a hell of a year. Patrice is still kicking himself for waiting so long. 

"Maybe we  _ should've  _ gone to the Grand Canyon," Brad muses, apropos of nothing and pulling Patrice from his reverie. "What the fuck was I doing spending two hours at the driving range yesterday?"

"You wouldn't have enjoyed the Grand Canyon yesterday," Patrice says. "You were too hungover."

"I can whack golf balls hungover, I can go see a wonder of nature hungover," he scoffs. "Am I right or am I right?"

Patrice rolls his eyes. "I plead the fifth."

"You're cute when you make that face," Brad says, after a beat.

"What face?"

"That face when you think you said something clever."

Patrice laughs, feeling his cheeks warm up a little. "I didn't think it was that clever."

"Clever enough to make that face." Brad leans into him, a mischievous glint in his eye. "C'mere."

"What?" Patrice asks, even though he knows. Brad kisses him, just a quick peck on the lips, and when Brad pulls back, he is smiling widely.

Any time they want. 

"I did enjoy Torey whiffing on all those drives," Brad says.

"He got so mad!" 

"So mad!" 

Neither of them have been to the Grand Canyon, but the idea lodged itself in Brad's head after the third shot of tequila that first night, and he has since cobbled together an itinerary out of their friends' drunk suggestions and half-remembered fantasies. The Galapagos. Mount Fuji. Barcelona. Machu Picchu. A list scribbled on cocktail napkins and fuzzy voice memos on his phone. "You gonna actually go this time?" Tuukka had asked, and had Brad replied, "So what's, like, Helsinki like?" Yesterday, Patrice woke up at half past noon to find COPENHEGEN written on his palm in Brad's handwriting. 

The truth is that Brad is the kind of guy who spends most vacations at home, sleeping in, watching movies, drinking beers with his sisters and going into the woods with his brother. His parents inviting him over for dinner and Brad sending Patrice pictures of his mom's cooking, that's the kind of vacation Brad is into. Patrice is never quite sure if Brad thinks he's getting away from something or if he's trying to recover something lost. Either way, the only way out is through. They both should know that by now. Or maybe they do, and they just haven't found the best way to treat this particular wound.

Last year Brad wanted to go to Big Sur. For about a week, Brad texted him links to pictures of impossibly blue ocean, pale beaches, verdant hills. The year before that, he was looking up plane tickets for that city in Morocco where everything's blue. This is how you know something is wrong. Some inner compass has been toggled askew and it's set him jittery, looking for something in this world that he can't quite grasp. 

He never ends up following through, though. 

"So," Brad says with a grin, and Patrice is groaning already. He knows that grin. That is a dangerous grin, one to be taken seriously. "Grand Canyon?"

"Come on, man." Patrice is smiling, but he also wants to sleep for a thousand years.

"What?"

"I'm tired."

"If we go to the Grand Canyon, we take a different exit," Hamid says, then conscientiously adds, "haha."

"Yesterday, he was looking up flights to Honolulu," Patrice says to Hamid. 

"That's just a bucket list thing," Brad shrugs.

"For me, on my bucket list?" Hamid replies. "The Amazon."

"Nice. That's a good one."

Sunlight reflects off the side of a building and into their eyes. Brad grunts, betraying his hangover, and puts on the sunglasses that were hanging from his shirt collar. They're new, purchased at the hotel gift shop by a sheepish Pasta after he accidentally stepped on Brad's original pair at the pool on their first day there. "I make it up to you," Pasta said when he gave them to Brad in a gesture of goodwill, and Brad beamed. They're these overlarge frames with oil-slick lenses that  look ridiculous on him, and he loves them. They perch awkwardly on his face now as he leans back in his seat and closes his eyes.

"Wake me up when we get there?" Brad says.

Patrice says, "Sure."

The car coasts along on its way to the airport. 

"You should try to go to the Grand Canyon one day," Hamid says as they pull up to Departures. "It's really quite nice."

"It's on the to-do list," Brad assures him, and tips him extra. 

As Hamid drives away, Patrice and Brad pick up their bags and go to find the Air Canada check-in desks. Next stop, Halifax.

"Ready?" Brad asks, as they get in line.

"Of course." Patrice is grinning. He can't stop grinning.

Next stop, the rest of his life.

*

They've only been a thing for a few months, but it already feels like forever, like something that's been happening forever, like they've only just now been able to find its true name. There are a lot of things that it's like, but none quite measure up to the real thing.

"So?" Brad said, and that was the first thing he said in this new world, where all suspicions were laid to rest and hopes were confirmed. Patrice wanted this for so long that he was no longer expecting to get it, and the look on Brad's face after they kissed for the first time will be etched into his mind forever, in the part of his mind where he keeps memories of old songs he loves. 

"So what?" 

"Are you good with this for real?" Brad asked. "Are you for real?"

Patrice almost couldn't believe Brad was even asking this. He propped himself up on his elbow and shifted on the bed to face him. "Am I for real?" 

Brad laughed and it was kind of a bashful laugh. "I don't know. I just… I got too much riding on this, man. It was like. Sometimes I thought that you just  _ knew _ . Like you could see right through me. How could you not know?"

Outside their hotel window, another Pacific division skyline cut through the horizon. It was around sunset, Patrice remembered that much, so golden light poured in through the glass and gilded everything - every eyelash on Brad's face, every curve of muscle on his back, every mote of dust in the air. That was when Patrice realized: now that their feelings were out in the open, now that there was nothing to hide, there was nothing stopping him from falling further in love. He thought he had already done what he could, but there was so much more to go. 

"I don't know how much more clearer I can get," Patrice replied, "when I said that I've been waiting for this for years."

"Me too." And then, with more jubilance and relief, Brad crowed, "Me too!" and there Patrice went, falling a little bit more in love again.

Funny how that works.

*

In the executive waiting lounge, Patrice grabs a danish from the buffet as they shuffle past it on their way to the far side of the room. He neglected to eat breakfast earlier, opting instead to stay in and blow Brad. It was probably the better decision in the end. They lay claim to two armchairs arranged kitty corner in a nook behind a glass screen. Brad props his feet up on the table and puts his electrolyte-laden sports drink next to it. Patrice eats his danish, and the time passes quietly and slowly as they scroll through their phones. For the first time in two days, Patrice checks his hockey notifications, and checks up on how the world has gone on without them. How the world spins on after they dropped off the face of it. Okay, that's a little dramatic, but it's been a dramatic couple of months. He doesn't share any of the news with Brad, who will come around in his own time. 

"Hey," Brad says, interrupting Patrice reading another article about the future of the Western conference. "Have you ever been to Bali?"

"Me?"

"You've been all over."

"I've never been to Bali."

"Dude, check this out." 

Patrice takes the offered earbud from Brad, and they lean towards each other as they watch the video of a dance on his phone. It's called the kecak dance, Brad explains. Kind of traditional Balinese dance, kind of modern too, a collaboration between artists from different cultures, and as Brad prattles on about the Wikipedia article he just read, Patrice is mesmerized by the rhythmic chanting on the screen, the mass and swarm. He reaches out and touches Brad's hand to angle the screen towards him so he can see better, and he lets his touch linger.

"I'm adding Bali to the list," Brad announces.

"Wow," Patrice says. "We got a lot of places to go to, eh?"

The 'we' just slipped out. Patrice didn't quite mean for it to be there, but he follows the impulse. You gotta follow it if it feels true. Is it too soon, though? Is it weird? Maybe Brad won't notice. 

Brad totally notices. "Yeah," he replies, practically beaming. "I guess we do."

"Starting with Canada."

"Yes, that most exotic land, Canada," Brad smirks. "My parents are super excited about having you over."

"I've been over before."

"Yeah, but like, not as the guy I'm banging."

"Is that their words?"

"They were like, 'Brad, can you ask the guy whose dick you're sucking if he has any food allergies'."

Patrice laughs. "I can't wait."

Next stop, home.


End file.
